"Our respect had once been mutual. But that was before the envy." ― Shelby Mahurin

Josiah Martin exited the security room of TTT and straightened his tie. Casually, he made his way to the staircase that led to the first floor of the corporation's central office in Stamford, Connecticut.

He was in no hurry and nodded genially to the corporate elites who greeted him. He glared daggers at their backs after they passed by. They were only friendly because they thought he was protecting them and their interests. If they had any idea who he was, they would not have been so kind.

His name was not Josiah Martin.

He was not a security guard.

Josiah Martin was the name of the man who had been hired as the new security officer at TTT. The man who wore his clothes had intercepted him a week before his job began.

Josiah Martin had never stepped foot in TTT.

But Edward Hunter had.

Eddie straightened Josiah's name badge and kept walking, giving off the impression he was making his rounds. Routinely, he stopped to check points of physical and cyber weaknesses as though he cared about fortifying such things. On the second floor, he stopped at the security desk and spoke solemnly with the guard on duty. After a few minutes, Eddie convinced him to leave.

To say he was simply a con artist would have been an insult. He was a con artist extraordinaire. During his many excursions in jail, his favorite past time had been picking apart episodes of Leverage and running a website detailing everything the team did wrong. He could do those jobs right. But without the hero rhetoric the show was obsessed over.

In that regard, he was very pleased with himself because he'd infiltrated this high security company without much effort, considering how rusty his skills had gotten over the last three years.

It was just sixth months ago he got out of prison in New Jersey for the fourth time.

Fortuitous circumstances led him to his current con while he was on the run from his parole board. A sniveling little man had contacted him with a job offer he originally had little interest in. Money did nothing for him if he had to lie low. It wasn't until the man offered more than just money that he became interested. The man, Yancy, also offered a clear record and a name.

A name he hadn't heard in years.

Shawn Hunter.

His baby brother.

Oh, how he despised that name.

Eddie cleared his head of unpleasant memories and focused on his job. There was very little to do except to get what he came for. The con had been put into place eight weeks ago and he was well liked, excellent at his job, and trusted.

Trust.

The downfall of the weak.

It was ridiculously easy to walk into the secured personal data room of TTT. Of course, he'd set safeguards in place with the CCTV cameras circulating cleverly edited footage rather than the typical recycled video. That was the only thing necessary really. The hard part of the job had been gaining access to the building and trust.

This was the easy part.

Eddie continued down the hallway and up a series of private stairs until he reached a secluded area of the building not found on any blueprints or map.

Josiah Martin's expertise was in cyber security and Eddie excelled at it too. A week ago, he easily faked a security breach that exposed the personal codes to the security data room. He reported it and allowed the data security team to do its' job. While he oversaw them, of course.

With the cameras on loop, Eddie slipped on a glove with the impression of Blake Turner's thumbprint embedded into it. The system was set up by his command to swallow evidence that anything, thumbprint or otherwise, was used to gain access to the room. He could of course disable the system completely, but he did not want there to be a gap of time where the system was down to be found.

Besides, no challenge meant no fun.

The door hissed open and Eddie stepped inside. The room was large- 12 feet by 12 feet. The walls from floor to ceiling contained built-in file cabinets. During the security breach the location of family files was also exposed.

Eddie knew exactly where the files he was looking for were.

As he put on a pair of lint-free gloves, he walked to the far corner of the room and knelt down. Whistling to himself, he casually flipped through the files until he found the ones he wanted. Newspapers, newspaper clippings, and documents on a cover-up took up five thick folders. Eddie chuckled to himself as he rifled through the contents.

Who knew Shawnie's favorite teacher had been such a bad, bad boy?

Eddie grinned. If he'd known this back then perhaps, he wouldn't have hated Mr. Turner so much. Truly they had more in common that he thought was possible.

I wonder if Shawnie knows? He snickered.

After carefully concealing the files within his heavy security jacket and under his bulletproof vest, Eddie took a piece of paper from his back pocket and unfolded it. Then he placed it in the space the files had been.

The paper had one word written on it in bold red letters:

SUCKAS!

Greenwich Junior High looked more like a prison than the ones he'd lived in over the years. All that was missing was the barbed wire and armed guards.

Eddie stood outside of the entrance to the school and stared directly into the security camera that allowed the secretaries in the office to see visitors to the school. Ordinarily those visitors would have to be buzzed in.

He turned his attention to the keypad below the camera that allowed teachers to let themselves into the building without disturbing anyone inside. He sniffed disdainfully. Easy to breach no doubt, but he swiped the card key he'd been given anyway. Although he was expelled from school at 14, he had no issues with places of education. Getting kicked out had been a blessing in disguise and allowed him to hone his streets skills.

Eddie entered the building and sauntered in as though he owned the place. He gave a lascivious grin to the women in the office as he passed through, ignoring their protests that he stop. He approached Yancy's office, picked the lock, and roughly shoved open the door.

The two in the office stared at him in surprise that turned to annoyance and then to disgust.

"Did you come in through the front?" Yancy snapped irritably.

Eddie stood defiantly before him. "Yeah, I did."

"I told you to use the back." The man behind the desk glared at him.

"Didn't feel like it today."

Yancy growled then arched an eyebrow. "Do you have the information?"

Without being invited he dropped into the seat next to Katherine and put his foot up on the desk. Katherine gave him a look of revulsion and moved away from him.

"I got it."

"Did you get out clean?"

"Of course."

"What have you done to insure no one asks questions about your failure to show up at TTT tomorrow?"

Eddie gave him a lazy, arrogant smirk. "I'm a beloved figure. Everyone knows me. Tomorrow morning when the real Josiah Martin shows up at TTT, my friends will start askin' a whole lot of questions he can't answer for a real long time. If they should discover the theft, and that's a big if, then Josy will be their prime suspect. I have his identity, so it'll be real hard for him to prove who he is."

Yancy nodded his begrudging approval. "Where are the files?"

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. He tapped the briefcase next to him with his foot, but he didn't move to get them.

"Where are mine?"

Yancy looked insulted. "I have them."

"Show me."

Glaring at him, Yancy unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out some papers. He laid them on top of the table. When Eddie leaned forward to take them, Yancy slammed his palm down on top of them.

Eddie snarled.

Yancy didn't flinch. "I want the documents."

With great disdain for the man in front of him, Eddie picked up the briefcase and tossed it at the assistant principal. As soon as the man lifted his hand to catch the bag, Eddie snatched the papers.

Yancy sat back in his seat and spread the files out before him. As he rifled through his prize, a vile smirk seeped over his features.

"Oh, this is good, Edward!" he crowed with fiendish delight. "Oh, look at all of this. It's so much better than I imagined!"

Eddie said nothing. He turned his attention to his own papers.

Katherine approached Yancy and leaned over his shoulder. Her eyes lit up with delight at what she saw.

"Looks like it's all here," she said appreciatively, running her hand over the documents near her as though she was stroking a dog's back.

"Yes, we have everything we need to go public now," Yancy breathed. He licked his lip in anticipation of that moment.

"Why wait?" she asked. "Why not do this during spring break?"

"I can't do that, Katherine," he sounded appalled. "I said I would do this after spring break. My word is my bond, and I will keep my word."

Katherine rolled her eyes and returned to her seat.

"Too many people leave the City for Spring Break or are otherwise occupied," he went on. "We want maximum damage done so we will wait until everyone is back in town."

"I don't think that many people will be leaving to travel."

"Ah, but I want Jonathan and the family in town when this comes out. You said they were going to Philadelphia for the break."

"Yes," she replied.

"I don't want him to be able to run and hide from this. We will wait until after Spring Break."

Katherine shrugged in annoyance still in disagreement regarding the timing of the release.

The assistant principal and executive secretary continued to talk while Eddie read over his papers. He stretched his foot out against the desk and accidentally knocked a paperweight to the floor.

Yancy jumped up, swearing at him. Eddie stared at the diminutive man as he ranted. Eventually, he calmed down.

"Edward, you may go," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

They were done with him. And like a used napkin they tossed him out.

Eddie took the opportunity to wander through the school on his way out via the back of the building. He tapped the edge of the file in his hand against his thigh as he walked.

A group of kids in the hallway caught his attention. Three boys. Two younger kids versus a kid a few years older. One of the younger kids was in between the other two with his finger in the face of the older one telling him off.

A sense of déjà vu drifted around him as he watched them. Then he shoved the door open and stormed out into the freezing air.

His con was done and there was no reason to stay in the City.

Eddie arrived at the Philadelphia trailer park he grew up in around seven that night. Philly seemed as safe a place as any for the time being as his parole board was watching the ankle monitoring bracelet of another Edward Hunter, an accountant in Hoboken. The boring little man, who didn't even put up a fight when Eddie "gifted" him the bracelet, would keep the heat off of him for a while with his boring little life.

As he entered the park he saw his former uncle, Mike, walk out to his trashcan and dispose of some waste. The big man saw him and glared at him. Eddie grinned back and saluted him sarcastically. Mike swore at him then went back to his trailer and slammed the door.

That had been the Hunters attitude toward him since it was learned that Chet Hunter was not his father. He was expelled from the family the way he'd been expelled from school.

"Uncle" Mike's betrayal was the worst of all of them as he was the one Eddie idolized. The one he wanted to be like. He'd once been an apprentice in Uncle Mike's shop, hoping one day to inherit the business as Mike's multitude of kids had no interest in it.

But then Mike's brother, Chet, after hours of drinking, handed Eddie his birth certificate in front of everyone at the family cookout. Every single Hunter saw that it was not Chet who was his birth father, but a Carlos Stratton.

It was a cruel way to tell someone you'd raised that you weren't their father.

The Hunter family suddenly had no tolerance for his behavior- the very behavior he'd learned from them. When a former cousin saw him dealing to a couple of teens the family used the drug exchange as an excuse to get rid of him by calling the very cops they so abhorred.

"Uncle" Mike made the call.

Eddie responded once he got out of jail by torching Mike's shop.

Living in the trailer park was also his personal revenge on the hypocritical family. They resented his presence but could do nothing about it- he had too much information on them and no qualms about using it to his advantage.

Eddie walked into the tiny living area of his small trailer. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator then crashed on the couch and took out the file Yancy gave him.

Inside contained detailed information on one person he'd purposely avoid knowing anything about for years.

Shawn Hunter.

He had never forgotten Shawn or his betrayal.

A picture of his "little" brother hung on the side wall of the trailer next to the TV.

All smiles and youth, big blue eyes and perfect floppy hair, pouty lips and good looks- his brother looked like he belonged on the cover of any teen magazine.

The picture was also covered in pinpricks. A line of darts was embedded in the wall next to the picture.

The brothers looked nothing alike but once he had been as fresh faced as Shawn, able to make everyone he encountered fall in love with him and want to take care of such a sweet child.

Life had aged Eddie hard, and his deteriorating looks caused fear now rather than sympathy.

The recent picture of Shawn in the file showed the same fresh face good looks despite being hidden by the beard he now sported.

Eddie stood abruptly to retrieve the darts.

He and Shawn were once brothers until Shawn became a teenager and chose his best friend over blood. The curly headed twerp Shawn was friends with was going to ruin his business venture and his brother threatened to rat him out to the cops if he tried to stop the twerp.

Shawn was living the high life with his English teacher in an uptown apartment and was disillusioned by his old life then. Eddie forgave him and waited for him to return home.

Which he did.

But Shawn wasn't interested in being brothers anymore. Every time Eddie tried to include him in his life, Shawn retorted that Jon wouldn't approve.

Jon this. Jon that.

Eddie hated the man.

Picking up a dart, he closed one eye and threw it. It hit Shawn's photo on the chin.

Turner was one of many who favored Shawn and looked down on him. Everyone looked down on Eddie Hunter, including his own parents.

When Virna took off with the family trailer and Chet went running after her, the concern anyone had was for Shawn.

Poor Shawn, his parents left him behind.

Poor Shawn, what's going to happen to him?

He had been left behind too but not one person cried "poor Eddie" or bothered to check on him.

Virna always loved Shawn more.

She wanted little to do with him.

Shawn was the cute one, the sensitive one.

Eddie was the troublemaker, the angry one.

She forgot that he was the one who took care of a toddler Shawn when she disappeared for days on end and Chet was at work. That he was the one to feed his brother and get him to school when he was older. He was the one who stayed when their sister, Stacy, took off and never returned.

He did the job Virna was supposed to do too many times when he was just a child himself. But there was never any gratitude.

Set one old shack on fire, torture one dying mouse, and suddenly she was done with him.

Eddie raised another dart and launched it.

It hit Shawn in the left cheek.

Chet loved Shawn more too and barely looked at him.

"My boy!" was always referring to Shawn, never to him.

Never once did Chet show up at his school before he was expelled for any reason, but he went to career day for Shawn. In times of sobriety, few as they were, he always did things for Shawn.

Chet must have known long before he gave him the birth certificate that he wasn't his father. Yet he still pretended to be and used that paternity to take him from the only person who ever loved him.

Eddie picked up another dart and ran it across his lips.

When he was 10, Chet decided to send him off to Virna's mother to live because he was too much to handle. This arrangement worked well until he was thirteen. Chet and Virna had separated, and Chet decided he needed extra help around the trailer that Shawn was too young to do so he took Eddie back.

He just walked in one day and took him from the only stable environment he'd ever known in his life. When his grandmother fought back, Chet hurled a laundry list of accusations at her ranging from the minor to insinuating that she allowed terrible things to be done to him.

Everything he said was a lie.

Chet was not a stupid man. He knew what he was doing. He took her to court on the grounds that Eddie was his son, and he had every right to reclaim his son. His grandmother wasn't even his legal guardian.

The worst of the accusations made the trailer park and soon spread to the rest of the town. Eventually, his grandmother was forced to move to escape the persecution and over time lost touch with her grandson.

After he went back to Chet, who returned to his typical drunken sloth self, he had nothing else to do but get into more and more serious trouble as he grew up. The only thing Chet did was feed him lies.

Chet took him away from his grandmother, convinced him that she left him and hated him, and then did nothing with him.

He was sorry that the man was dead, however. He would very much have liked to shown Chet what he really thought of him.

He launched the next dart. The dart pierced the photograph in the eye with a sickening thwack.

Shawn was the chosen one. The loved one.

Chosen by the Matthews. Chosen by Turner. Loved by Audrey. Loved by that twerp and his girlfriend.

Eddie took out the papers from the file and spread them out on the dilapidated, puke-stained couch.

Not only had baby brother done well for himself in a legal and legitimate way as an adult, but he was also back with Turner who had married the girl he was fooling around with back then.

It didn't escape him that Shawn lived with them in one of the most expensive areas of Manhattan either.

Once again Shawn was living the high life while he wallowed in the gutter.

What made Shawn so much better than him?

Eddie stood up abruptly and slammed the remaining darts into the grimy green carpet on the floorboards. He started to pace then stopped and turned on his heel to face the photograph.

Shawn grinned at him, mocking him.

Eddie reached into his coat pocket and pulled out something that resembled a black handle. Without taking his eyes off the photo he pushed a button and a freshly sharpened knife blade flicked out.

Yancy had been keeping close tabs on Shawn's "family" for a long time. Eddie was well aware of how long Turner and his wife had been waiting for Shawn to come home. That they kept a room for him, untouched for years.

He wasn't their blood, but they treated him like he was.

No one waited for Eddie. Not blood. Not anyone.

No one ever embraced him

Eddie ran his thumb across the blade until he drew blood to test its sharpness.

What made Shawn so lovable?

What made Shawn so special?

He glared at the photograph.

Yancy promised him that when all was said and done, Shawn would have no family anymore. He promised to deliver a blow they would never recover from.

Eddie raised the knife to his shoulder, aimed, and let it fly.

If Yancy didn't follow through, he would.

The knife struck deep in Shawn's forehead.

Eddie would make sure his "brother" never had peace again.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone.

Next chapter should be out at the end of the month.

I'd love to hear your thoughts as we near the end of this book and if you are enjoying it. If you prefer, you can find me on Tumblr and Discord listed in my profile.

Thanks so much for reading!